“Free Trade Refugees: From Chiapas to the Prairie”
This is a story of a group of peasants from a village of 1000 people in Chiapas and their Post-NAFTA migration to the Midwest of the United States. Their migration history is unique – they were pushed out of their hometown by NAFTA in search of jobs to earn cash in order to purchase the communal land which was made available by NAFTA. Currently, almost all adult villagers except one are undocumented but almost all of their children were American-born.
The documentary records their strategies of coping with economic and political shifts in Mexico before NAFTA and how they utilized their limited resources to migrate first to the border town and then planned their crossing, their route to the Midwest and how they settle and rebuild their community in a rural small town.
A film by Carol Huang. Original Score by Mark Enslin and Jacob Barton. Editing by Bogdan Heretoiu.
DVD Available March 2013